Posts Tagged ‘collector’

The factory that manufactures Rolleiflex cameras is being liquidated in a bankruptcy auction, so there’s a chance we may never see new Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex cameras produced ever again. As the fate of the brand is in limbo, 21 original Rolleiflex camera prototypes have appeared in an auction on eBay. For a cool $178,000, collectors can own a unique piece of photographic history.Read more…

Here’s a video that offers a look at the life and work of Joachim Schmid, a Berlin-based artist who is obsessed not with making photographs but with finding them.

For more than 30 years now he has been hunting for ordinary discarded photographs that catch his eye. Once discovered, these found images — many of which were destined for landfills — are compiled into collections that give them new purpose and meaning.Read more…

After 36 years of collecting images from landfills while on the job as a Sussex dustman (that’s a garbage collector to us American English speakers), Bob Smethurst has one of the largest single collections of images from World War I of anyone in the world. Read more…

Robert E. Jackson isn’t exactly a household name, but his massive collection of one-of-a-kind snapshots has earned him a great deal of recognition in the right circles. Back in 2007, he was given an entire show at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. And some of his collection is currently on display at the Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York City.

He’s a prolific collector with over 11,000 prints to his name, and so NPR’s Claire O’Neill asked him to call in and talk with her about the snapshot, what it was, what it is, and whether or not it’s in the process of fading away forever. Read more…

Mark Kologi is known by many simply as “The Photo Man,” and over the years he has bought, sorted and sold over three million forgotten personal photos. It’s his passion, and the connection he has forged with his photos and the people who buy them shows in this short documentary by Ben Kitnick. Read more…

Want to own a giant collection of vintage cameras, but don’t want to spend a lifetime acquiring them one by one? If you have deep pockets and money to burn, here’s your shot: collector Brain Cue of Alameda, California (kka20101 on eBay) is selling his massive camera collection that he has spent over 50 years building up.Read more…

Stamps, coins, comic books, and baseball cards. Those are some of the popular things people around the world collect as a hobby. Not Ying Nga (Cecilia) Chow. She collects unprocessed photographic camera film.

Chow, a photography enthusiast based in Hong Kong, China, started collecting different films back in 2008. Since then, she has amassed an impressive collection of over 1,250 different films, ranging from ordinary films that are still in use today, to obscure old Russian films that you’ll be hard pressed to find anywhere on Earth. The collection features films by over 100 different brands from 30 different countries.Read more…

Last month we reported that 36 digital pigment prints of photos by William Eggleston had been auctioned off for a whopping $5.9 million. At least one man wasn’t too happy about the news: a New York-based art collector named Jonathan Sobel has filed a lawsuit against Eggleston, claiming that the photographer’s decisions to sell new, oversized prints of his iconic images has diluted the resale value of the originals. Sobel owns one of the largest private collections of Eggleston’s photographs — 192 photos worth an estimated $5 million. He is seeking unspecified damages and also a ban to prevent Eggleston from making new prints of his 1960s suburbia photos.

Hong Kong-based camera enthusiast TM Wong has 1000+ instant cameras in his collection — possibly the world’s largest collection. That’s enough cameras to use a different one each day for nearly three years!Read more…

As newspapers struggle to survive in this new digital media world, an Arkansas-based collector named John Rogers has quietly built the world’s largest privately owned collection of photographs by paying huge sums of money for their photo archives. He currently has about 35 million photographs purchased from newspapers including The Chicago Sun Times, The St. Petersburg Times, and The Denver Post. Of these images, he owns or shares the copyright to about 25 million.

Part of the deal in each acquisition is that Rogers’ company digitizes and meticulously organizes the images, making the digital versions available to the newspapers. Apparently his phone is “ringing off the hook” from newspapers eager to have him purchase and digitize their archives.